


Lazy Dancer

by cannibalinc



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angels, Angst, Demons, Fallen Angel Sherlock, Fallen Angels, M/M, Winglock, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3451274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibalinc/pseuds/cannibalinc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We are only Human, I suppose.”</p><p>John never inquired after Sherlock’s emotional well-being.  Does Sherlock ache along his spine, where the weight of his wings once hanged? Does he feel the inescapable tug of gravity painfully in his calves when they lift away from the ground to run? </p><p>“Human is not so bad,” John agrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazy Dancer

Humans assume that their world is neatly cushioned between two other realms, Heaven and Hell, and that the borders are clearly defined and difficult to navigate.

There is a famous scholar who is known to have run experiments on the fluidity of interdimensional particle travel, and what he did yielded became the foundation for understanding the shape of the universe and the universes that lay above and beneath. He discovered an inversely proportionate relationship between the size of the particle and the ease with which they departed and returned through dimensional leakages.

Of course it is not so simple.

The physics by which Human particles operate are not in cohesion with the physics that occur in either Heaven or Hell. While it may be extraordinarily difficult for Earthian material to pass beyond its own dimension, the same cannot be said for whom they call Angels and Demons.

John Watson meets Sherlock Holmes at night, where blue and red lights tangle with the shiny yellow of police tape, and voices whisper speculation along the darkened hollow corners of the business district after hours.

Their modern acquaintanceship embarks on a lie.  

“What were you doing here?” DI Lestrade, as he’s introduced himself, asks. He’s got a handheld recorder to John’s chin.

“I was walking—” back to my place from the grocery. No, John doesn’t have any bags or receipt on him, ”from my place to the grocery. Ran out of milk.”

“At half past midnight?”

“Someone unemployed doesn’t need to maintain the typical circadian rhythm of the middle aged,” a booming voice echoes across the taped lot. “And asking what he saw will be a waste of time. The murder occurred long before this individual lumbered by.”

The smell of this man, the burning embers— _I know you, I know you._

“John Watson,” he says dumbly, jutting his hand out to the tall man, so very tall, angelic tall, as with their species. He is lily white, his skin pinkened by heavenly fire scorned, and broad, not as the Earthly skies but a near thing.

He takes John’s palm stiffly. This man isn’t used to Human nerve endings. He is New.

Fallen.

His silhouette is without wings but so very bright.

John lusts.

“Sherlock Holmes.”

A worthy name. John feels as though he woke up today knowing it on his teeth. Their touch is the convergence of dimensions, an invocation of centuries bound to this— this knotted fate.

John sees something holy in the charred blue of Sherlock’s eyes. Sherlock dissects him.

“You’re a—”

_Doctor, a soldier, a widower. You’re a sibling, an injured man alone, a risk seeker. You’re a—_

It is all true, for he has been those things before, cannot help being them now. He is all of those men and none.

“He’s Fallen, you know,” a Human officer tells him. She is called Donovan, and she does not know why Sherlock Fell, but she speculates freely. “He’s a total psychopath.”

Sherlock Holmes asks him within a single Earth’s rotation to be his flatmate. John accepts, of course, with a bullet and an unerring aim.

John Watson meets Mycroft Holmes in similar fashion.

“Sherlock Holmes is the most important person to me on this entire earth,” he confesses in the dark rectangle of a gutted warehouse, but John is not a priest.

You reveal too much, John wants to say. Guardian Angel.

“I should like to always know what goes on around him.”

John can see this being’s face as a sharp-toothed smear in the shadows. Wings of terrible span hover just out of existence. Angels can only affect the illusion of Humanity, creatures whom forever elude their full understanding; and so, can never truly mimic.

“Sounds obsessive,” John says instead.

“Humans,” Mycroft hisses, as though the sound pains him, “rarely comprehend the severity and intimacy of Guardian Angel and Ward. My task is greatest in all Man’s existence.”

John cannot disagree, in his own experience. The bond between Guardian and their Fallen Ward is the planets aligned and rotating, speeding hundreds of thousands of kilometers a second, and never crashing.

Until it does.

“So what do you want with me?”

“Nothing, Doctor. You Humans are so… twee. I mean to warn you. Proceed with caution, and be sure you do not interfere with Sherlock’s Restoration.”

John would never.

Living with Sherlock is that, indeed. John has never lived; not in a typical sense. There were times he’d delved into what makes a Human just so, and why. Now he just so Is. He’s a lazy dancer, and breathes when Sherlock breathes.

Mycroft is perched on their roof, hand extended. He waits for Sherlock to want him and his Heaven again, and when Sherlock never indicates repentance, he waits still.

John never asks Sherlock why he Fell.

Sherlock it seems, is that someone others tolerate when they must and admire when he’s far away. John has never tolerated Sherlock; he has savoured.

“Caring is not an advantage,” Sherlock says one evening, after Irene Adler has twisted him up inside and shaken his footholds on Humanity.

“Did Mycroft teach you that one or was it in a children’s illustration?” John asks over the meniscus of his tea. He chuckles to himself.

Sherlock holds his violin aloft, as though the original intention to play became lost in the valley of his elbow. He turns to John, a swan neck and a bleeding silhouette.

“Do you care for much, John?”

“Can’t you deduce that?”

Sherlock sets his violin, his song, back in its case. John doesn’t know if there is music in Heaven, if Sherlock composes with an ear turned to higher frequencies. John wonders if Sherlock misses the voices of his kin, their communication now severed. Angels don’t speak with one another, they entwine. Their thoughts, impressions. Their passing fancies. It creates a world where misunderstanding is impossible. As is deceit.

One can hardly blame Humans for holding them as moral beacons.

“My sight is as though walking in the dark when dealing with these. These... I am not equipped.”

“I care,” John concedes. His tea is cool, the rustle of Sherlock’s hand coming to caress his shoulder scorching. There is a scar there, forever seared into John’s being, no matter his shape or form, the mark of Heaven’s contempt.

“You would be so selfish?” his dear friend asks.

“I am always selfish.”

“We are only Human, I suppose.”

Oh, Sherlock.

John holds his hand, firm. He’s never inquired after Sherlock’s emotional well-being. While plagued with endless curiosity, such matters as these often slip beyond John’s recall. Does Sherlock ache along his spine, where the weight of his wings once hanged? Does he feel the inescapable tug of gravity painfully in his calves when they lift away from the ground to run?

“Human is not so bad,” John agrees.

Moriarty happens, more an event than a man; an experience.

When he walks, he leaves the stench of wet earth behind, where it lies beneath permafrost that melts for the first time, and the creatures thawing within begin to rot. John breathes and tastes soil, its grit settling underneath his tongue.

“Let’s play, Sherlock,” Moriarty says, as though he can peer into the shell of him and see his worth; finds him a spectacle worth plundering. Sherlock has that pull with Demons. He is spectacular in the game. John wonders why Mycroft does not present a heavier hand to the situation.

“It is getting dangerous,” Lestrade says in his office. “This Moriarty business. Not that what Sherlock usually gets into isn’t dangerous.”

John taps his fingers on his armrest. He doesn’t like being down at the Yard in general. It is filled with all manners of creatures, steeped in habit and bureaucracy. John has never gotten beyond the culture shock of government. He too is a creature of habit.

John sighs, crosses his leg over the other.

“I know. But I guess that’s between him and his Guardian.”

When he looks up again, Lestrade has gone very still, like an animal of prey, and is staring at him. Though he is silent, his face is loud.

“What?” he asks Lestrade.

“You’re not...”

John raises his eyebrows, prompting him to continue. Lestrade clears his throat.

“You’re not Sherlock’s Guardian Angel?”

John feels himself startle. It has been a while since he’s been pushed to speechlessness. Sherlock’s Guardian? Him? John cannot begin to imagine the feeling of that bond, the tangle of their souls. The affirmation that they are of one singularity… He knows the yearning well, at least.

Lestrade shifts uncomfortably in the silence.

“Well, it wasn’t just me who thought it. Donovan and—well. The team.”

“Your team? Your whole team thought I was Sherlock’s Angel?”

“We just assume it requires a divine level of patience to handle him,” he explains. “And you’re damn good at it.”

“I have been dealing with him a while.”

Longer than Lestrade would know.

“Look, why don’t we finish up this report then go out for a pint? Sherlock’s likely off doing something illegal with evidence as we speak. May as well let him finish.”

May as well.

In the bar, John digests while Lestrade ferments. He wonders how many look at him, a weathered face and soft hands, and think _Angel_. Angels are typically tall, towering, stretched in appearance, unnatural. They are pallid, waxen creatures with talons and wings that reach all corners of the Earth if they are powerful enough. Poor imitations of Human caricature. The only remnant of his heraldry Sherlock managed to retain is his height. He could encompass all of London in his arms. He does.

It is drizzling. John has been told that such weather is miserable, but he feels all motions of Earth keenly. The tectonic plates shift under his teeth, and he feels their vibrations in his skull.

 _This_ , however.

“John,” he hears through the mobile pressed against his ear as he stares up at the roof, his friend, his Human, a black crow to the white sky behind him. “Keep your eyes on me.”

This is the miserable thing.

“Sherlock,” he says a bit breathlessly. If he starts to run now, he could catch him if he fell, probably. He’s fast enough. Probably. He doesn’t want to have to know. “I know you forget that your body isn’t an Angel’s anymore, but you have to know you can’t safely jump from that height.”

His words are little more than a wheeze through the mist.

“Rather the point, John. Please, do this for me.”

“Never,” he says fiercely. Sherlock’s voice seems to falter.

“What is the meaning of this?” John demands. “Don’t move!”

John has not put forth himself, sacrificed his identity, all for his Human to throw away— _himself_.

“What they’re saying—”

_Liar, criminal, fabricator, psychopath._

“It is all true” Sherlock gasps breathlessly. “Everything about my career, about Moriarty—”

Moriarty. John closes his eyes. Of course. When he opens his mouth and lets the fine rain fall on his tongue, he can taste the miserly creature in the air. Moriarty has been an orchestrator from the beginning, the puppeteer, and John hasn’t said anything because Sherlock has looked so wonderfully inspired, so...

“I think I’ve let this go on quite long enough,” John says waspishly.

He takes a step, and the space continuum folds to accommodate his wishes. The cobbled street vanishes, and his foot falls surely on the gravel of St. Bartholomew Hospital’s roof.

“I try not to interfere with the complexities of Human destiny or your choices,” he says from directly behind Sherlock, his tall figure straight and swaying on the ledge in the wind, back and forth over the edge of the building ominously. “You are not mine to command.”

Sherlock drops his phone in surprise, the screen shattering. He whirls around on his heel, loses his balance, wobbles. Sherlock tips over the edge of the roof, his eyes wide and his mouth parted on a gasp. John lifts his hand, and there is a dark shadow of his fist that stretches beyond the roof, a black gaseous mirror of his gesture. He feels Sherlock fall into his palm, catches him in the infancy of his plummet and slams him firmly onto the rooftop, caging him with his fingers.

“John,” Sherlock gasps from the prison of shadowed claws holding him safely to a solid surface. The fingers are as bars, their talons digging into the concrete.

“Cheater,” a voice snaps, vitriolic and wet with a mouth full of blood. John looks over at Moriarty’s corpse as the blood pooled about his head wriggles and snakes back into his snarling mouth. The Demon sits up. “You’ve ruined our game!”

“ _Ț͍͈̤̲͉̉̉̆͒h̗̼ͪ̑̌̽ͦ̈́ͯͪe͂ͥ ̤̞̉̿͂͗̾ͥg̥̈̏̏a̙̠̎ͨ̃̄ͤͭ̿ͬm̹͓͍̿̓̏ͧͦ́e̬̪̦ͥ̈́ ̝͚͑̌i̼̼̘͐̀͋͊sͦ̿̃ o̯͙̤̞̻͉̫̝̔ͪv̼̖̎̚ĕ͇̬̎͒̒ͭ̓r̋!_ ” John shouts. The Demonic warble echos oily through the Human Plane, vibrating and omnipresent.  

Moriarty hisses in rebuttal, his laughter sinister. It colors the air with darkness.

“You’re—” Sherlock exclaims.

“I love a good plot twist,” Moriarty sings. He stands, advancing. There is something wriggling behind him, something almost There but not quite. “I love when people are honest. But you’ll not interfere, dear John.”

“Who will stop me?” John asks softly, raising his hand once more. The air ripples, and suddenly Moriarty’s wide steps are not so confident. He appears to be fighting an invisible force. He snarls and his mouth is full of teeth, full of reaching hands, grasping at the Beyond.

“Who will stop me?” John asks again, fist clenching.

“Not you, a little, young thing. _N̅͋̿ͬ͌o͐̐̏̌̀͛̓͋tͤ̓͠ ̔̓ ÿͩoȕ,̓̂̽͋ͫ  M̊ȃ͒po̽͂̂̌̑͜n̷̉̓ȯ̈ͮ͊̔s͆̽̒!_  You can hardly hold Richard Brook’s body together. I could smell the decay from the first moment you appeared.”

Moriarty screeches in his frozen place. John has Banished many Demons from this world, to their own. For interfering with him or Angels, for fiddling with the fabrics that separate dimensions to the brink of hazard. For even less than that. Moriarty is just Another.

He summons a circle before Moriarty, watches as the Demon writhes and screams, as thick black and red bubbles from his mouth. He crumples where the sphere suspends itself within his chest. The concrete beneath John’s feet crumbles to sand. Moriarty is folded in upon himself, over and over, the spray of his blood scattering along the white roof top. The drops make a song, and this is John’s song; no instrument but his own destructive nature.

Moriarty folds until his is a singularity. A void.

John waves his hand, and the darkness implodes across the city, leaving nothing but a light rain in its wake. It washes the smell of vermin from the air. He turns to Sherlock.

“ _Demon_ ,” his Human gasps, stumbling to his feet.

John rolls his shoulders, the image of his power receding and leaving only his flesh shell to the eye.

Silence in 221B reigns. They await, frozen as they are and incapable of gathering the momentum towards forward, for an external power. They await for Mycroft to appear, to smite the wicked from this Plane, from his Human lie.

“I understand very little of Demonology.”

John and Sherlock sit staring at one another. John is used to breathing, to inducing within himself hunger. He finds himself unable, now, under Sherlock’s eyes. They pierce.

“There is very little Demons have made known to Humans,” he agrees.

It is easier that way. Human misconception is a sizable source of Demonic power. They trust in symbols and in ritual,place faith in exorcisms, and assume the Dimension of Angels will protect them from Demons.

Angels protect only their own kind.

“I am aware there is a general caste system. A table of ranks.”

“There are many kings in Hell, as with earth, their rise and fall fluid and ever evolving. Determined by power and following, yes.”

John’s memory of it is distant. He has traveled the Earth for so long, has avoided the megalopolises of Hell.

“Do you have an army?” Sherlock asks.

“No.”

“So you are of a low class?”

“No,” John answers with a smile. “Not all of us capable of ruling wish to rule. My power is drawn directly from the Earth, not through a third party, spawn.”

They tread lightly. In many ways, their life together is very much like before. Sherlock appears to be reluctantly curious. He’s never been one to care for a being’s origin, whether of this world or another, but there is a shadow on his face when he looks upon John.

Things are quiet when Moriarty is gone. John awaits the backlash—from other Demons, from Angels. There are many creatures who have benefitted from Moriarty’s genius. His work is heavily polarized in all dimensions. John can only speculate it is momentary fear that such a person could so easily banish Moriarty that keeps the silence.

John has only ever once been a Demon feared. It fits him like a too tight sweater, heavy and close to his neck.

Sherlock continues his consultant work, but he does not offer John an invitation. He slinks around in a wordless mire until he cannot resist picking at John as he does all things.

“What of John?”

John looks at Sherlock questioningly. What of him?

Sherlock advances toward John and his armchair, steps up onto the armrests and off onto the coffee table. He perches on the polished imitation wood. He is very much the avian he once was. John remembers his silver wings...

“This John Watson, this body. Who was he before you possessed him? Did you even know who he was?”

“Oh,” John pauses. “I didn’t possess this body.”

Sherlock appears confused.

“I created it.”

It takes time to create something, to form from the formless. John Watson is just another variation of who he has formed himself to be.

“Impossible.”

John sighs.

“There is… Well. Demons are not bound by the rules Humans prescribe to them. There are Demons who can forge their own bodies within this Plane.”

He can feel lightning, the pulsing of his flesh as it attains weight, the searing heat of liquid blood draping his skeleton, the roll of hunger in his belly. The dryness of his lips. It is an exquisite moment, _Becoming_.

Sherlock leaves, then.

John does, too.

He has not left his body in a while. He steps out of it through pores, until he stands over the shell of John Watson, an empty, still thing that stares at the ceiling. He turns away from it, him, the kitchen of Baker Street, the smell of chemical and Heaven’s ash, and steps onto sand.

He is in a wasteland, naked as the barren ground before him. The dunes shift and roil beneath his feet, crawl up his calves and say they have missed him. This is where he was born. Some force, like wind but less careless; like gravity but without mass.

John Watson does not exist in this world, this place Humans call Hell. It’s reality is malleable to John, to Jah, to Jormungand, where time has never begun nor ended, and he can be forever in this single time whenever he wants.

The white sea of sand is where he belongs. He remembers crawling from the sand without shape and meandering the terrain without thought or feeling. It was long ago. Before the Human universe formed, before anyone thought to keep time or keep anything in this rapidly evolving existence. When galaxies birth, collide, fly away in a single blink, what is worth holding?

He blinks then, and Wills, and the sky and ground are inverted. He stands on nothing, just blue, and watches the orange of forever dancing dessert ripple above him. He used to make spawn this way, watching them drip from the sand like rain then scatter. His children he has never claimed, nor they him. Demons breed spawn on impulse.

He does not understand himself or others easily. He does not envy the grapple of power, the self-perpetuating war of Hell. He is not piqued by the commune of life and energy within Heaven, their hive minds. He has not been tempted by Human wiles or sensation.

There is only Being, and it stretching before him endless and demarcated only by his own indulgences to pass it by.

There is only the sand.

There is only—the Until.

There is Only; Until he, with aimless intentions, stumbles upon the creature Sherlock.

Demons are plagued with the notion of possessing Humans to enter Earth.

There is only one John wishes to possess.

“How many?”

“Hmm?” John startles, coughing. He is his body once more, and Sherlock is peering over him, a look of contemplation poised as a knife.

“Where were you, just now? I thought you were...”

John imagines Sherlock coming back to find him where he was left, appearing on all fronts lifeless.

“‘How many’?” John asks Sherlock. He stands tall once more, hovering over John.

“How many Demons do you know of that can make their own bodies?”

John purses his lips. He is hesitant.

“One.”

Sherlock breathes.

“Excluding you?”

John breathes with him.

“Including me.”

“That’s...”

The first of Moriarty’s legacy come for London. John is surprised they are human, though perhaps he shouldn’t be. They are angry their investment has fallen through, and they punctuate their disappointment with guns. 

It is a whirlwind of motion and violence, and reminds John of days of old.

“Can Demons become Human?” Sherlock asks.

John thinks.

“I’ve never heard of it. But I do believe that if it can be conceived, it can Be.”

“Do you even know the scope of your own power? Your limits? Are there limits?” Sherlock shouts, paces their rugs into submission.

“I am as any Demon,” John admits. His hand strays to his breast plate, the place above where his artisan’s heart beats. “I am destroyed by Angel’s smite.”

Sherlock stares at the place covered by woolly cotton. He is thoughtful.

“Have you had many encounters with an Angel’s ire?”

John meets his gaze.

“Just the one,” he whispers.  

“Would you, if you could?”

“Attain an Angel’s scorn?” John laughs.

“Be Human,” Sherlock says softly. There is something fragile about it that reminds John of an earlier time when he was wont to games.

John hums.

“There was a time...”

Sherlock narrows his eyes.

“There was a time I was obsessed with the idea. I thought, if only I were not a Demon...”

“What brought on such malaise?”

They stare at one another.

“Tragedy.” John looks down at his lap where his hands are folded. “The wake of a Demon’s touch is always so. I could not reconcile my nature with my… Well. It was very long ago.”

Sherlock clicks his tongue. Pivots to the wall paper.

“Mycroft came to visit today while you were at work. He advised caution, but I have to wonder why he doesn’t appeal to his Lord for intervention. How can he stand knowing his Brother is living with a Devil?”

Sherlock looks to him as though he already knows the answer.

“Perhaps he is busy with other things,” John offers.

“I feel him hovering every hour. He is busy indeed, with his own nosy preoccupations,” Sherlock exclaims, glaring at the ceiling, as though Mycroft were up there.

“I’m sure he just doesn’t want things to be like last time,” John interrupts. He regrets his words as soon as they’re free of his tongue, and he does his best to avoid looking where Sherlock has gone very quiet.

“Last time,” Sherlock says carefully. “Last… Time.”

“Yes.” John clears his throat. “You did wind up Falling, after all. I presume.”

John can hear the creaking of their floor as Sherlock walks, leisurely.

“Those days are very blurry to me. Vague impressions of failure and corruption, the tainting of my being.”

There is little to say. Nothing at all, even.

“When an Angel Falls, their body is drawn back into the mecca of energy that creates us; then expelled, bodies stripped to Human. We are born a blight. _I_  am a blight,” Sherlock spits. “And I do not even know why.”

John closes his eyes. He can feel sand under his hands, swelling. He could turn everything to sand.

“You are old, aren't you John? You don’t know even your own age because age was not a concept when you first manifested.”

“I can’t help but wonder what might have kept such a Demon so occupied in its long trek through eternity.”

“I can’t help but wonder why I can’t remember the reason I abandoned my Heaven, which so keeps me tethered here, unable to regret or repent, unable to be Restored.”

When John looks up, he does not see a white wasteland or an oceanic sky. Sherlock stares at him. He looks through the Human face John has crafted to the barren desert that lies within.

“We have met before,” Sherlock says finally. They stand across from one another, the divide infinite and infinitely expanding. Sherlock a galaxy, John another.

John remains silent.

“The details that determined my condemnation are lost to me, but I remember the Fall. My wings were ripped from my spine the moment of my manifestation, and I found them near where I landed, charred and defeathered. The voices of my people drowned from my mind by my own terrified screams, forever.”

Sherlock’s voice is tangled in the knot of his throat as his face burns red, his Andromeda eyes tight and watering. He shakes.

“I spent the first year of my Humanity licking cocaine from alley pavement, because it put something other than myself in my head. And then they sent me Mycroft. To sober me! And remind me of my status.”

John inhales with Sherlock’s next breath, because he cannot breathe otherwise. He licks his lips.

“We met on Earth when you were a Guardian. Long ago. We played games. Clever tricks and funny things. You were… Shining. Brilliant, as you are. It was much like between you and Moriarty. You loved these games with me. We must have roamed all over London for decades, tiring every creature to be caught up.”

John swallows. The words leave him slowly. Sherlock is still, listening with rapt focus.

“I interfered with your ward a lot. It was a part of our play. Naturally, it escalated.”

Naturally. As with Moriarty, the games became dangerous, increasingly chaotic, and Sherlock kept up with him at every pace. Of course he couldn't stop, leave him be. Not when he’d spent his ages alone and waiting to fade away as easily as he’d come. Of course he’d had to have Sherlock.

“I manipulated the game so that you would be solving one of my puzzles by a deadline, while your Ward unknowingly entered a cab that I was driving. You had been more often turning your attentions from her to me. I drove her while I watched you agonize over my riddle, counting the hours down. I drove her toward Westminster Palace just as you were cracking the code.”

“Stop,” Sherlock whispers, face a gaunt spectre of misery.

“We were crossing a bridge over the River Thames. You were laughing in delight as you read my coded message in triumph.”

“John, _please_.”

“But my message was detailing exactly what I was doing at that very moment you were smiling. I swerved into traffic, induced a collision. We were pushed through the barriers of the bridge.”

John remembers the jolt of the cab rolling, breaking through the guard rails. He remembers the scream of the woman, ragged and scared. He remembers Sherlock’s sudden understanding, the frenetic bursting of his silver wings.

“You pulled her body from the waters. You were burning white...”

John cannot force another utterance from himself.

“And where were you when I was crawling with filth for a high? When I was starved and homeless? Where were you while I anguished?”

John touches his aching shoulder through his sweater.

“When you saw me standing above the bank on the bridge watching you, while you lay still wet from pulling your Ward from the Thames, you fashioned a bow from her bones and hardened one of your silver feathers to a spear. Your smite destroyed my Human body and repelled me from the Human Plane. I had not the strength to return until recently.”

“My arrow scarred you. You have been hiding from your shame for three years, and now you return. Why?” Sherlock demands. The force of his revulsion, his tears, embitter the room to the point John cannot withstand.

John shudders. He feels himself flicker between There and Not, but he stays.

“I cannot turn away from you.”

John could form civilizations and worlds, Demons, fast-hearted animals, oceans. But he cannot pull himself from the magnetism of Sherlock. John will lust for him until he knows no more.

Sherlock seems to expel his tempest of anger and grief. He steps toward John haltingly.

“I apparently couldn't either,” he whispers.

“But I am Human now, John,” Sherlock says after a long time. He looks upon John with desperation. “When I die there will be no rebirth, no reunion. I have but an average, _mortal_  eighty years of life. That will be the end.”

John cups Sherlock’s cheek, rubs his salty tears into the coarseness of his thumb’s cuticle.

“Even your death will not assuage my hunger for you. It will plague me for eternity.”

“I suppose that is love to you,” Sherlock laughs, leaning until their foreheads rest on one Plane.

John smiles, closes his eyes.

“It is.”


End file.
